When this second volume of diaries begins in 1979, Kenneth Rose is 54 and well established as the author of the Sunday Telegraph social column ‘Albany at Large’. The first volume, published last year, was reckoned by many to be a disappointmaent on account of Rose’s snobbery. This one is better. By now Rose has arrived. The Thatcher years were his glory days.
When he died in 2014 Rose left six million words of journals, which he bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, and the two volumes edited by D.R. Thorpe which have been published amount to roughly half a million words. Rose saw his diary as his legacy. Back in 1988 he recorded: ‘George Weidenfeld is very enthusiastic about eventually publishing the journals I have been keeping.’ Rose appointed a succession of clever young men to be his literary executor, charged with editing his journals, and eventually settled upon his friend, the political biographer Richard Thorpe.
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